Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Online Games and Virtual Worlds
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MMOG StudiesMMOG research represents a convergence of Internet studies and game studies, and also includes aspects of sociology, anthropology, cognition and learning and even economics. (REFS) While much work has been done analyzing the properties of virtual worlds as media objects (Klabbers 2003; Klastrup 2003a; Klastrup 2003b) (Aarseth, Smedstad, and Sunnanå 2003) (Konzack 2006), MMOG research tends to focus on the practices of players. Each of these approaches is necessary, but what is sometimes missing from the discourse is the connection between the two. In Internet studies in particular, there is an unfortunate habit of ignoring the design of the software being studied, as if it had no bearing on social behavior and interaction. Player-centric research inevitably converges with game-centric research, and as some researchers have pointed out, the practices of design and play are inextricably intermingled. (REFS: Taylor, Klastrup, DiGRA thing) As is often the case with young academic disciplines, MMOG research faces some significant challenges. First, the study of MMOGs is inevitably delimited by what the game industry offers up. Early MMOG research focused on the fantasy role-play genre at the exclusion of almost everything else, and the bulk of this research revolved around a single game, EverQuest. Today, some scholars jokingly refer to online game research as “WoW Studies,” as World of Warcraft has supplanted EverQuest as the research subject of choice. This parallels the tendency of anthropologists to gravitate toward field sites in warm climes: there are very few ethnographic studies of Siberia. This single-genre focus is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the demographic of the fantasy role-play genre strongly parallels the demographic of those who originated its conventions thirty years ago. While claims continue to be made that MMOGs are attracting more and more women, virtually all of the quantitative research corroborates the finding that, in a typical MMOG, 80%-90% of players are male, with the highest concentration in the 18-24 age range (Castronova 2001; Seay, Jerome, Sang Lee, and Kraut 2004; Yee 2001). Thus, while it is correct to say there are more women playing these games, there are also more males playing them, and women still represent a relatively small percentage of the overall audience. Similarly to how pre-feminist sociological and anthropological research (and even medical research) tended to focus primarily or exclusively on males, games that appeal to different segments in terms of gender, race and age are seldom studied, if at all. As a result of this demographic skew, the normative position of “player” tends to exclude a large percentage of the population, leaving women, children and older adults out in the cold. (REF: hegemony of play) Interestingly, a disproportionately high number of MMOG researchers are themselves women, so we do have a number of excellent studies specifically focusing on female players, in spite of the fact that they make up a minority of the populations of most MMOGs. A growing interest in MMOWs has helped to assuage this somewhat, as these environments tend to attract a broader, or at least a different, demographic. The second by-product of this narrowness of scope in a tendency to generalize findings that are highly genre-specific. The most common example of this is the player taxonomy. Richard Bartle, designer of the original MUD game, has laid out a detailed player taxonomy that has been cited extensively by researchers and designers in describing MMOG play styles. Bartle’s types of Achiever, Killer, Socializer, and Explorer hold up in many instances, but begin to break down when applied to players of games outside the fantasy role-play genre. Indeed, Bartle never claimed that this typology should be applied to all MMOGs, merely to games after the fashion of the MUD he designed. The same risk of over over-generalization can be applied to the study of MMOGs as cultural artifacts, as scholars begin to codify the defining characteristics of online games and virtual worlds. Part of the problematic discourse that haunts this analysis is inherited from an earlier, perhaps less mature phase in game studies, and that is the question of whether or not something can be defined as a “game.” In Chapter 2, I will address this question in as broad and inclusive a way as possible in order to provide an overview of the geography of MMOGs and MMOWs. CHAPTER 2: DEFINING VIRTUAL WORLDS Ludic vs. Paidiac Worlds The discourse regarding the distinction between “games” and “virtual worlds” arises from a long-standing debate among both game developers and games scholars about what is and is not a game. While these arguments and their resolution are not within the scope of this book, because this study includes virtual worlds that are both games and clearly “not games” by anyone’s definition, we will need address some of their distinctions and commonalities in order to better understand our core concern here, which is the intersection of play communities and the design of the worlds they inhabit. Let’s begin with a generally accepted definition of play. We have already introduced Johan Huizinga, considered the father of “ludology” (the study of play), who defines the formal characteristics of play as: …a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means. (Huizinga 1950, p.13) A few arguments can be made here, but for now we will put them aside to explore the salient points. Central to these is the notion of a game standing ”outside ordinary life.” Huizinga also characterized games as taking place within a “magic circle,” or a play frame, in which participants arrive at a mutual agreement to suspend everyday rules and social contracts to abide by a shared set of constructed rules, although these rules can and often are subverted or bent in the process. (REF) This “magic circle” can take a number of different forms: an abstract construct, as adopted by children in street play; a formal ritual context, such as Mardi Gras; an activity defined by a “boundary object” (REF: Star and Greisemer), such as a ball or a game board; a physical space, such as a sports field or arena, or mediated environment, such as a digital game or a virtual world. French theorist and sociologist Roger Caillois builds on Huizinga’s points with a more concise definition, describing play as: 1) Free (not obligatory), 2) Separate (circumscribed within the limits of time and space), 3) Uncertain (outcomes are not determined in advance), 4) Unproductive, 5) Governed by rules, and 6) Make-believe (a “second reality” or “free unreality.”) (REF, p.#) Here we see another key principle also put forth by Huizinga, that play must be voluntary. Putting aside some potential pitfalls in items two and four for the time being, this definition provides a suitable starting point for a discussion of MMOGs and MMOWs. As noted earlier, Huizinga was particularly concerned “agonistic,” goal-oriented, conflict-centered play, which Caillois expands with the notion of paidia play that does not necessarily require a goal and has a more option sturcture. These frameworks become particularly useful in enumerating the distinctions and similarities of massively multiplayer online games and non-game virtual worlds. There are numerous variant definitions of games, but using a hybrid of several derivative definitions, most games researchers would agree that a game is a formal system for structured play constrained by a set of rules that prescribe the means of achieving a specified goal. (REF: Salen & Zimmerman?, Suits, Pearce, DeKoven, Juul) Bernard Suits humorously but accurately characterizes a game as the most inefficient means of accomplishing a task. (REF: Suits 1967, p.22) From here, debate takes over. Must a game’s goal be definitive? Must there be a finite “win/lose” state that represents success or failure to accomplish the goal? Must a game’s goal or even its rules be articulated at the start of play, or can they be discovered through the process of gameplay? These questions become particularly contentious in the context of MMOGs, most of whose goals and rules are seldom explicitly stated up front. Moreover, the goals of such games, as discussed earlier, are typically based on the open-ended, though linear, objective of “leveling,” constructed through a series of provisional micro-win/lose states associated with a particular quest or task. Once the maximum level is reached, the gameplay actually shfts to an entirely different mode, rather than concluding. In fact, losing or even winning are anathema to most MMOGs. Because they are subscription-based, they rely on an economic formula that precludes the closure that is typically associated with “winning” or “losing” in traditional games. MMOGs can also contain individual goals that differ from the main goals, player-, role- or group-specific goals, as well as missions or quests. Players can and often do augment the prescribed goals with meta-goals of their own, such as becoming a successful merchant or creating an über-guild. These meta-goals can be categorized as forms of emergence. The primary distinction between ludic massively multiplayer games and non-game, paidiaic virtual worlds is that the latter do not present the player with a prescribed overarching goal. Rather, they provide a range of activities and options for social interaction, including games, and often include affordances for players to contribute to building the world itself. Often called metaverses or social worlds, these non-rule-based, paidaic virtual worlds are characterized more as sandboxes, in which players engage in open-ended, unstructured, creative play although they typically allow for more structured play to emerge at players’ discretion. Such MMOW sandboxes often include more formal “games” within their larger open-play framework; however, due to the absence of an overarching goal, these worlds cannot be considered games in the formal sense. All virtual worlds, whether they are games or not, have structures and even rules. “World rules” take the form of player constraints, as well as the world’s properties, its physics, its cosmology or world view and values, its “karma system,” or causal structure, its feedback systems, including rewards and penalties, its communication mechanisms and interfaces, its economic structure and transaction mechanisms, even its allowable modes of transportation. World rules constrain the ways in which players can interact with the world and each other, and the ways in which they may contribute to constructing the world, if at all. World rules are important in our discussion of emergent behavior because they embody the affordances through which emergent behavior materializes. World rules include:
While both MMOGs and MMOWs have world rules that describe the world and its properties and some constraints of player actions, MMOGs alone possess overarching goals and embedded rules that prescribe what players are to do and how they are accomplish given goals or tasks. Download 0.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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